Can’t touch this: “The Untouchables”

Although it originally was broadcast from 1959 to 1963, “The Untouchables” television series will always be a show of the 1970s to me.

I don’t recall seeing the program when it was new. My parents weren’t the types who allowed 4-to-7-year-olds to run free at Wal-Mart at 2 a.m. (not that there were any Wal-Mart stores in those days, but you get my drift), so I presumably was banished to the confines of my bedroom before it came on.

In the mid-1970s, however, I was in college and working in the sports department of the Des Moines Register and Tribune. By coincidence, one of the local TV stations started showing “The Untouchables” at 10:30 on Sunday nights.

Even during pro football season, Sunday nights were relatively slow in sports — at that time, Sunday games were played in the daytime. As a result, the sports copy editors had plenty of time to watch “The Untouchables” before heading off for drinks at the Office Lounge.

Going to the Office after watching the TV show was like stepping back into the Prohibition era. Housed in a decrepit and mostly abandoned office building, the bar looked like a speakeasy. Combined with the fact that one of the copy editors could almost perfectly imitate the voice of noted newspaper columnist and broadcaster Walter Winchell, the program’s narrator, the sports staffers were transformed into The Untouchables — or, better still, their Chicago gangster counterparts.

(The Walter Winchell impersonator went on to a successful career as a university sports information director. Presumably, he has never suddenly broken into a staccato-voiced announcement that it’s “Chicago, 1932” when escorting high-dollar donors to his school’s athletic teams around campus. Also, his father owned a couple of theaters in Des Moines, and the impersonator once was able to procure us autographed pictures of legendary actress Kitten Natividad, star of the cult classic, “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens,” but I digress.)

Although it lacks some of the entertainment value of seeing it during my college/sports department career, watching “The Untouchables: Season 4, Volumes 1 and 2” on DVD is time well-spent.

This was the last season of the show, but the storylines remain incredibly strong. And while “The Untouchables” was criticized during its initial run for displaying too much violence, the producers apparently never backed down on their presentation of a violent era: Somebody usually is bumped off in the first five minutes of an episode (Santa Claus, or at least one of his helpers, gets it a very unmerry Christmas present in the season’s first show). Tommy guns or .38s are the usual method of dispatch, although one character gets killed by a large block of ice shoved down a set of stairs at him.

Through it all, the intense Eliot Ness (Robert Stack), ever natty in three-piece suit and hat, directs his team of incorruptible federal agents against an army of bootleggers, or, even worse, the Mafia. The only time Ness appears to relax a bit is when he occasionally fires up a Chesterfield from the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co., the program’s original sponsor.

(Although the show is set in the late 1920s and early ’30s, a time when double-breasted, pinstriped suits with wide lapels were the norm for men — and indeed, many of the characters wear them — Stack’s single-breasted, monochrome wardrobe looks suspiciously early-1960s-ish. But he’s so cool that one can easily overlook this fashion faux pas.)

Oddly, the stories weren’t presented in any sort of chronological order. Hence, one episode may be set in 1933 and the next one in 1931. Fortunately, Mr. Winchell keeps viewers abreast of the date for each program.

Extras: There really should be a law that rereleased television shows have to include the original commercials. “The Untouchables” collection offers nothing but the programs themselves, so if you want to see ringing endorsements for what a fine-quality smoke Chesterfield provided, you’ll have to search YouTube. However, if you’re a thrifty individual who tends to watch DVDs in the one air-conditioned room of the house, closed captioning is available to help make the programs understandable over the racket of that noisy Kenmore. (And if you’re that cheap, you probably do DVD reviews just to watch stuff for free.)

The bottom line: If you, too, got sent to bed before these programs originally aired, this collection offers a way to get a bit of revenge on your parents: View the programs any time you want — day or night! Aside from that, it’s a collection I definitely would purchase — if I didn’t have to pay these outrageous air-conditioning bills.